This is Still a Holy War

01.07.10

Segregating people of certain countries to go through pat-downs or walk through full-body scanners, forcing everyone to remain in their seats during the last hour of certain flights, and disallowing passengers from accessing their carry-on baggage during certain times of the flight will do nothing to change the fact that so many people consider this a holy war.

The total religious disconnect with this war makes it unlike anything else we’ve encountered. This isn’t just an ideological difference like the capitalism versus communism conflicts that America endured in the last century. Communist ideals didn’t create suicide bombers willing to detonate themselves along with their American counterparts like those involved in this conflict.

America has some difficult decisions to make. The knee-jerk reaction would be to make any and all Islamic countries banned from all air travel. We’re already doing a less severe version of that with the restrictions and mandatory extra-security measures for those who travel from certain countries and anyone who is a citizen of said countries. Sure, on the surface it makes sense: stop those people from countries who want to kill us from entering America’s borders. But, the issue though isn’t just with those specific countries. The obvious way around this form of security would be for terrorists to get official papers from countries not on that no-fly list. They have the money and the connections so you know that will be possible. What happens when the next terrorist travels on a British, Australian, or Canadian visa or passport? Do we just start banning anyone with an Arabic sounding name? What about Richard Reid, the infamous shoe-bomber? Were these current rules in place then, he still could’ve made it through.

I don’t have the answers to this riddle and I don’t envy those in government this difficult task. I recently read an article about how Israel handles their airport security that made me wonder why we can’t scrap our system and start over. I realize the costs involved would be enormous, but what about the costs if we don’t? How does it help us to spend money on our current system that doesn’t work: we spend all of our time in fear that the terrorists will sneak through the holes in our security (which they will eventually) and then putting bandaids over those gaps (rinse and repeat). Unfortunately, the article doesn’t explain how Israel deals with incoming flights, which is our current crisis.

There will always be a way around our false sense of security. When will we realize that we aren’t any safer by adding more and more reactive, rather than proactive, measures that come dangerously close to infringing upon the very values on which America was founded? Alienating specific demographics – in this case, Arabs and Muslims – will do nothing to help us in this fight. If we want to create more radicals, this has to be a pretty solid way to do it.